WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee, said on Monday that an accusation of sexual misconduct against him was “completely false” and that the incident “never happened.”

“This is a completely false allegation. I have never done anything like what the accuser describes - to her or to anyone,” Kavanaugh said in a statement distributed by the White House.

Christine Blasey Ford, a university professor in California, has accused Kavanaugh of trying to attack her and remove her clothing in the early 1980s when they were both high school students in a Maryland suburb outside Washington.

Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Steve Holland; Editing by Will Dunham